I just want to know how this conversation will lead to growing better weed? Or making better LED lights??
So it's not semantics; it's research and physics.
Does the atmosphere as a whole refract and disperse light like a glass prism? No.
Can individual particles in the air refract and disperse light like a glass prism? Yes.
See ice crystals or water droplets suspended in atmosphere
Can large volumes of these particles cumulatively have a prism like effect? Sort of and will depend on the viewers relative sight angle.
Does it have to be raining? No.
Now take a pair of polarized sun glasses and go outside on a partly cloudy day and look up at the clouds around midday. You might see rainbows around the edge of the clouds, that you couldn’t see without the polarized glasses. You can see them with the glasses because the light has been refracted by the time it reaches your eye. Just because you can’t perceive it, as without any sunglasses, doesn’t mean it isn’t still happening.
Of course on a clear day, the atmosphere doesn’t refract and disperse pure white light from the sun into psychedelic disco-floor colors all across the sky.
The amount of spectrum change we see at the ground surface is due mostly from Rayleigh and Mie Scattering through whatever composition of atmosphere is local and the relative zenith angle of the sun.
But excluding reflection, refraction and dispersion from our local spectrum viewing is not always applicable and therefore, can’t be stated as an absolute. Just because you’re standing on the wrong side of the rainbow, doesn’t mean it isn’t there for others to see from their relative viewing angle. The same thing happens with some atmospheric particles and aerosols. Sometimes on in individual molecule basis, sometimes as a collection of molecules.
But don’t take my word for it, please research this deeper.
www.ossila.com
Carry on
